After the Czars and Commissars

Journalism in Authoritarian Post-Soviet Central Asia

Eric Freedman

Publication Year: 2011

From Czarism and Bolshevism to the current post-communist era, the media in Central Asia has been tightly constrained. Though the governments in the region assert that a free press is permitted to operate, research has shown this to be untrue. In all five former Soviet republics of Central Asia, the media has been controlled, suppressed, punished, and often outlawed. This enlightening collection of essays investigates the reasons why these countries have failed to develop independent and sustainable press systems. It documents the complex relationship between the press and governance, nation-building, national identity, and public policy. In this book, scholars explore the numerous and broad-reaching implications of media control in a variety of contexts, touching on topics such as Internet regulation and censorship, press rights abuses, professional journalism standards and self-censorship, media ownership, ethnic newspapers, blogging, Western broadcasting into the region, and coverage of terrorism.

Cover

Frontmatter

Contents

Theoretical Foundations for Researching the Roles of the Press in Today’s Central Asia

From the onset of Bolshevism through the era of postcommunist authoritarianism
in Central Asia, a continuum of constraints has restricted the media.
Lenin’s candid acknowledgment that press freedom and public access to
information could threaten his young regime was followed by Josef Stalin’s
acknowledgment of the power of a controlled press to sustain...

Part 1: Under the Commissars

Soviet Foundations of the Post-Independence Press in Central Asia

Throughout the Soviet Union, the press was assigned the role of propagandist,
collective agitator, and educator, to build the Communist Party and to
further Marxist-Leninist ideology. The guiding principle was the media’s
subordination to the party, the single voice and agent of the working class.
Although the press did not favor free expression, it did...

Part 2: National Perspectives

Oligarchs and Ownership: The Role of Financial-Industrial Groups in Controlling Kazakhstan’s “Independent” Media

Kazakhstan is known for its authoritarian political system and the absence
of guarantees protecting citizens’ fundamental rights, including freedom
of speech and freedom of the press. Under the rule of president Nursultan
Nazarbaev, who has been in power since 1989,1 a variety of mechanisms—formal and informal, legal and de facto—has been...

Reinforcing Authoritarianism through Media Control: The Case of Post-Soviet Turkmenistan

Total control over national media featured prominently in the evolution
of authoritarianism in post-Soviet Turkmenistan. Since its first edition in
2002, the annual Press Freedom Index from the Paris-based NGO Reporters
sans Frontieres (RSF) has regularly ranked the Turkmenistani regime as
one of the most serious off enders of press freedom...

Hizb ut-Tahrir in Kyrgyzstan as Presented in Vecherniy Bishkek: A Radical Islamist Organization through the Eyes of Kyrgyz Journalists

For ordinary people, knowledge about any radical clandestine organization
usually comes from the mass media rather than from direct interaction. In
theory, given the space and resource limitations of print media, it is expected
that newspapers create reduced but not distorted pictures of events or social
phenomena. In practice, the media intentionally create...

The Future of Internet Media in Uzbekistan: Transformation from State Censorship to Monitoring of Information Space since Independence

The Internet remains an underused means of expression for the majority
of citizens in Uzbekistan (United Nations Development Programme 2007;
Guard 2004, 203). Connectivity is not the main obstacle, because it has
kept improving since the state monopoly on access was abandoned in
2002.1 The government also demonstrates strong...

Journalistic Self-Censorship and the Tajik Press in the Context of Central Asia

Tajikistan’s constitution and press law have officially ended censorship.
Despite such legal directives, however, the government and power elites
continue to control the media—directly and indirectly—and to frame
a constricting press atmosphere that forces media owners, editors, and
reporters into “politically correct” editorial...

Part 3: Trans-Regional Perspectives

Loyalty in the New Authoritarian Model: Journalistic Rights and Duties in Central Asian Media Law

After almost twenty years transitioning from a single-party press, Central
Asia was still defined by a set of laws and behavioral patterns that
restricted media pluralism, which stemmed from early the early 1990s.
This chapter assesses how Central Asian media law has developed by
analyzing both journalists’ and governments’...

Ethnic Minorities and the Media in Central Asia

The most captivating feature of Central Asia is undoubtedly its multiethnic
and multilingual population. This mosaic of peoples and languages results
from a rich precolonial history, as well as the legacy of the Russian and
Soviet empires. The region was structured during the national-territorial
demarcation that the Soviet authorities...

Journalists at Risk: The Human Impact of Press Constraints

Central Asia has been physically and psychologically dangerous territory
for journalists, both in the Soviet era and a erward. The reasons are many,
including the authoritarian nature of its regimes; the lack of a tradition
of independent media; inadequate education and training opportunities
for journalists; pressure on journalists and...

International Broadcasting to Uzbekistan: Does It Still Matter?

The twentieth century gave the world its first true mass medium. And within
a few years of its birth, radio had emerged as a weapon that both powerful
and weak governments could use to spread their national ideologies,
promote their geopolitical objectives, improve their political and cultural
image, gain social influence, and in some cases...

Part 4: Journalism Education and Professionalism

Journalism Education and Professional Training in Kazakhstan: From the Soviet Era to Independence

This chapter traces journalism education in Kazakhstan as reflected in the
eyes of some of its teachers. It recounts the legacy of Soviet times, the
struggle to find a footing a er independence in 1991, and recent developments
in higher education—in both the Strategic Plan of Development of
Kazakhstan, 2005–10, with goals set by the Ministry...

Professionalism among Journalists in Kyrgyzstan

The crumbling of the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s, followed by the
breakup of the Soviet Union, led to major economic, social, and political
reforms across much of Eastern Europe. Foreign aid, business investment,
and academic assistance flowed into the region. Among the desired reforms
was development of an independent press...

Part 5: New Media, New Frontiers

Internet Libel Law and Freedom of Expression in Tajikistan

On July 30, 2007, Tajikistan president Emomali Rakhmonov signed
amendments to the country’s criminal code to extend the application of
existing libel laws to the Internet. Article 135, for example, was amended
to say: “Defamation, contained in public presentations, mass media, or
Internet sites, is punished by obligatory labor...

Blogging Down the Dictator? The Kyrgyz Revolution and Samizdat Web Sites

Kyrgyzstan, a small Central Asian country of five million people, made the
front pages of print and Web newspapers and the broadcast leads of the
world media on March 24, 2005. On that day, President Askar Akayev, who
had ruled the former Soviet republic for fourteen years, fled the country a er
a series of large public protests, including one...

Conclusion: Through the Crystal Ball

The end of the Cold War represented an apparent victory for by NATO, capitalism,
free enterprise, and democracy over Marxism-Leninist communism, the
Warsaw Pact, and the Russian-Soviet empire. With that watershed event, the
five newly independent states of Central Asia emerged from the wreckage of
the Soviet Union as potentially committed to free...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.